A prominent environmental group is suing to reverse EPA’s May decision pushing back deadlines for the food industry to start buying climate-friendly refrigeration systems.
The Natural Resources Defense Council filed its challenge Monday to EPA’s rule delaying key provisions of the Biden-era phase-down of the use of hydrofluorocarbons — potent climate change pollutants used in cooling and refrigeration.
EPA’s May rule gave grocery stores five additional years to switch to buying new food storage systems that don’t use HFCs, a class of chemicals that can be tens of thousands of times more potent in driving warming than carbon dioxide.
In a blog post accompanying the announcement, NRDC experts pointed out that EPA’s unusually truncated cost-benefit analysis for the regulatory delay listed a host of impacts not fully considered — including the potential to drive up the cost of HFCs by increasing demand for the chemicals, while supply continues to drop under a separate rule.
